Ladies Night! Election Ushers In Record Number Of Female Senators

One of the most exciting parts of seeing the election results pour in last night was how many awesome and inspiring women were elected into Congress — especially when it happened at the expense of GOP misogynists like Rep. Todd Akin. All told, 10 female senators were elected or re-elected into office last night, bringing us to a record high of 19 women Senators in U.S. Congress. New Hampshire also made history by electing the first all-female state delegation.

In Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill trounced Mr. “Legitimate-Rapes”-Don’t-Cause-Pregnancies with 54.7 percent of the vote. Akin got just 39.2%. As every third person on social media/TV pundit and headline writer said: I guess the voters have a way of shutting particular things down! Har har har … One of the bests tweets I saw re: Akin was from Alex Carpenter: “The Rape guy lost” “Which one?” Your party has serious issues if people have to ask ”Which one? [For the record, "the other rape guy" lost.]

In addition to McCaskill, all five of the other Democrat women up for Senate reelection — Sens. Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) — won their races.

Elizabeth Warren was elected into her first Senate term in Massachusetts, beating Republican Sen. Scott Brown and becoming the first female Senator from the state. “To all the women across Massachusetts who are working your tails off, you better believe we’re gonna fight for equal pay for equal work,” she said in a wonderfully enthusiastic victory speech.

In Wisconsin, Democrat Tammy Baldwin became both the first woman in Wisconsin and the first openly gay candidate in America (!)to be elected into the Senate. Nebraska Republican Deb Fischer and Hawaii Democrat Mazie Hirono were also elected into their first Senate terms — bringing the total count of female Senators in the 113th Congress up to 19, up from 17 currently and the most ever in U.S. history.

New Hampshire can also call firsties today: It elected the first all-female state delegation, with Democrat Maggie Hassan winning the governor’s race, Democrats Ann McLane Kuster and Carol Shea-Porter taking the state’s two House seats and both incumbent female Senators — Republican Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen — retaining their seats.